Thank you, Madam Chair. Your pronunciation was perfect.
Good morning, Madam Chair and honourable members. Thank you for this invitation and opportunity.
I am here with my colleague Dr. Denise Werker, who was the deputy chief medical health officer until August 2019, but thankfully agreed to come back from retirement and join us in the office of the chief medical health officer as a public health consultant. We will be speaking on behalf of Saskatchewan. I'll be making some opening remarks, and then we'll both be available for questions.
As per the written statement that we shared earlier, Dr. Michael Boda, the chief electoral officer at Elections Saskatchewan, approached me in February 2020 to ask about public health advice to support the planning and implementation of the provincial elections during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was in this spirit that the provincial elections would be held in October 2020, and the CEO of Elections Saskatchewan built a relationship with us and the office of the chief medical health officer to address prior issues related to communicable disease control during earlier elections and by-elections, so we already had that working relationship.
It was my view and the view of my office that the provincial election could be held in such a way as to minimize the risk of transmission of SARS-CoV-2, despite all the uncertainties about how the pandemic would unfold. The initial advice from my office to Elections Saskatchewan was to optimize voting by mail; to reduce crowding by increasing the number of hours of advance polling and the number of polling locations; to organize the flow of voters and the processes of voting at polling locations to minimize COVID transmission risk; to implement additional transmission mitigation measures at polling locations, including hand hygiene; to increase cleaning and disinfection; to establish measures to promote two-metre physical distancing to further minimize COVID transmission risk; and to apply additional precautions for voting occurring in long-term care facilities and personal care homes.
It was also recommended that Elections Saskatchewan independently contract an infection prevention and control specialist to provide direct support to Elections Saskatchewan on many of these mitigation details. We also agreed to plan for a worst-case scenario in which an election would remain feasible.
In addition to the medical health officers at the ministry of health, environmental public health consultants were also available to provide input through a structured process to Elections Saskatchewan on opportunities to mitigate transmission risk during the planning and implementation of the elections. The public health consultants and the medical health officers provided guidance and proposed mitigation measures. We also facilitated operational connections within the ministry of health and the Saskatchewan Health Authority as needed and were available to provide input to ad hoc issues throughout the planning and conduct of the elections.
As chief medical health officer, I participated in regular meetings with the CEO of Elections Saskatchewan and also had an opportunity to visit a mock-up of a polling location before actual voting was held. As the chief medical health officer, along with the House leaders of the two main political parties, I was a member of the electoral advisory group that was established by the CEO of Elections Saskatchewan. This electoral advisory group convened monthly from June to September to review the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in Saskatchewan.
Thank you. Both I and Dr. Werker will be happy to answer any questions you may have.